Lunch Wagon, Madison Square, 1904

Provenance

Charles T. Henry, New York.
James Graham & Sons, New York
Arthur G. Altschul, New York, acquired from the above, 1956
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, December 4, 2002, lot 12
Private collection
Sale, Christie’s, New York, The Max N. Berry Collections, January 23, 2026, lot 372

Literature

Geist, “Month in Review,” Arts, vol. XXXII, no. 5, February 1958, p. 48, illustrated (as New York at Night).

D.G. Lowe, ed., New York, N.Y.: An American Heritage Extra on the History of the Nation’s Greatest City, New York, 1968, p. 75, illustrated.

Deshazo, Everett Shinn (1876-1953): A Figure in His Time, New York, 1974, p. 207.

“The American City: A Gathering of Turn-of-the-Century Paintings,” American Heritage, vol XXVII, no. 3, April 1976, p. 31, illustrated (as New York at Night).

Patricia Hills, Turn-of-the-century America : paintings, graphics, photographs, 1890-1910 (Whitney Museum of American Art, 1977), 157, no. 202 illustrated, 192.

Related Work

Fifth Avenue Bus, 23rd Street and Broadway, 1914, pastel and charcoal on rough wove paper, laid down on board, 18 7/8 x 25 9/16 inches, signed lower left: Everett Shinn 1914; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Note

Ashcan artist and a member of The Eight, Everett Shinn was one of the great interpreters of New York City’s parks, squares, and the bustling activities of urban life. He lived just a few blocks away from this square and by the time Lunch Wagon, Madison Square completed, it was the city’s busiest and most exciting square filled with entertainment into the evening.[1] In the 1870s and 1880s, when most New York City restaurants closed by 8 p.m., entrepreneurs in Providence, Rhode Island, and Worcester, Massachusetts, introduced mobile wagons serving hot food and drinks as “night lunches” for nocturnal workers.[2] These early horse-drawn food trucks often had nocturnal-themed names, such as “The Owl,” visible in the present work, while Shinn includes a distant view of the city’s Madison Square Garden tower at upper right.
 
This painting is registered in the Art Inventories Catalog at the Smithsonian American Art Museums.

[1] Janay Wong, Everett Shinn: The Spectacle of Life (Berry Hill Galleries, 2000), 23.

[2] Richard J. S. Gutman, “Diner Design: Overlooked Sophistication,” Perspecta 15 (1975): 42-3.